


And it was a long time coming

by silentghosts



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, the oven is a metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 03:23:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6887893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentghosts/pseuds/silentghosts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Betsy dies and Bitty learns that maybe the pies weren't the best thing about that oven after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And it was a long time coming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thatfamoushappyending (betsytheoven)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betsytheoven/gifts).



> For Kim,
> 
> You're always going to be my favourite oven, thank you for one year of bringing out the best in me and being the best person I know.

Betsy dies and Bitty doesn’t know how to handle it. As stupid as it may sound, that oven was his first real friend at Samwell. Even when there was no one else, there was Betsy, there were pies, and there was hope. Now, sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor with his forehead resting against the cold oven door, he can’t help but let out a shuddering sigh, tears threatening to escape the corner of his eyes yet again. There isn’t anything he can do, he tried everything himself already and while Dex managed to fix her back in January, this time it’s worse, this time there is a very real possibility that Betsy is gone for good.

It's only a couple of minutes later when Bitty hears running up the porch steps, the old hinges groaning in protest as it is pushed open, followed by the sound of footsteps along the hall. Turning his head towards the door, he can't help but let out a small, sad sigh as Jack's head pokes around the corner, the smile on his face quickly falling into a frown as his eyes flit along Bitty’s body.

“You okay, Bittle?” Jack asks, stepping into the room as Bitty fights against the tears welling up in his eyes again. Of course he isn’t okay, but it’s a stupid oven, so what was he supposed to say. “Did something happen?” Jack walks further into the kitchen to crouch beside Bitty, his hand awkwardly hovering a hair breadth away from Bitty’s shoulder.

“Betsy… Betsy is not doing so good. She's not well,” Bitty sighs, rolling away from Jack so that his back is pressed up against the side of the oven, his face still wet with tears as he tries frantically to rub them away, wishing for nothing more than for Jack to leave him to his mourning.

“Oh,” Jack says, falling silent.  
As the silence stretches out, Bitty thinks he might just get his wish before he actually feels a hand on the top of his knee, drawing his attention away from the flour spots on his pants. 

“Was that an… aunt?” Jack asks, sounding so sincere that Bitty can’t help the soft laugh that escapes as Jack lowers himself down next him, his hand still on his knee, their shoulders pressed together where they rest against the oven door. 

 

//

 

That afternoon Dex pronounces Betsy officially dead, and Bitty disappears to hide in his room, not wanting to deal with any more concerned looks from teammates. And besides, he has papers to write, he shouldn’t be baking anyway. 

With the next week comes the news of Jack officially signing with the Providence Falconers, as well as Betsy gratefully coming back to life just long enough to churn out one last batch of cookies. It might not be a pie, but Jack smiles at Bitty as he bites into them and that alone is enough to make losing Betsy again worth it. 

 

//

 

Bitty is lying on his bed scrolling through baking blogs and wasting time on twitter when he hears a knock on the door, followed by Jack sticking his head into the room.

“Froyo?” he asks before his eyes catch on the pile of textbooks strewn across Bitty’s bed, “or if you're studying right now, we can go later perhaps?”

“Goodness, no. I stopped working like half an hour ago.” Bitty moves, shutting his laptop and piling his textbooks back onto his desk. “I’ve just been looking through banana bread recipes online to waste time,”

“Meet you downstairs in five then.”

Later, Jack pulls out his card and pays for Bitty’s froyo before listening to him talk about an oven for what seems like twenty minutes straight. Later that night, Bitty stares at the ceiling of his room and struggles to remind himself that it doesn’t mean anything, but still, an afternoon that would be normally filled with baking hurt a little less than usual and Bitty is grateful all the same.

 

//

 

The day of Spring C, Bitty wakes up to Shitty handing him a mimosa through his window, the Haus abuzz with activity as the members of the team come and go. Bitty’s pleasantly drunk by noon, as he sits leaning against the front porch with Jack, while Ransom and Holster try and take on Shitty and Lardo in beer pong, Jack's camera slung around his neck.

“What do you even have that out for anyway, you know you can take photos on your phone, right?” Bitty can't help but laugh as Jack brings the camera to his eyes again, his face screwing up in concentration. 

“It’s for homework.” Jack smiles back as the calls of, “Homework! It's fucking Friday, Zimmermann, why are you so lame?” erupt from the group around the table in the centre of the front lawn.

“Come on, Jack, we know you work harder than the rest of us, you don’t need to rub it in.”

“It’s pictures, it’s fun.”

“So is baking, and you don't see my upstairs writing about it,” Bitty says, leaning sideways to bump their shoulders together as Shitty comes running towards them, collapsing into Jack's lap as he yells in protest.

“Jacky Boy, why are you so lame, it's Spring C, come on, man,” he whines, leaning over and snatching Jack’s beer from his resting hand, bringing it to his mouth and downing half of it.

“Okay, okay, I get it, ha, ha. I’m putting it away now, Shits.” 

The feelings swelling in Bitty’s chest catch him unaware: how much he is going to miss this, miss Jack and Shitty, miss Jack. Swallowing around the lump in his throat, he pulls his phone from his back pocket and begins tweeting the exchange, smiling as the responses flow in, laughing at Jack's inability to have fun and just enjoy the party for just one second.

“Lots of chirps from you, eh, Bittle,” Jack laughs, finally succeeding in pushing Shitty off him, his shoulders shaking against Bitty’s. “Really, you’re mighty quiet, what are you doing there anyway?”

Twisting away from Jack, Bitty tries to lock his phone as Jack cranes his body around Bitty’s shoulder, leaning the weight of him pressed firm along the expanse of Bitty’s back, his breath ghosting Bitty’s face, smelling like beer and the store bought muffins they ate for a snack after breakfast.

“Are you tweeting?” His laughter is ringing loud through Bitty’s ears as he reaches over to try and snatch the phone out of his hands, tipping the both of them sideways onto the grass, wrestling the phone from Bitty’s fingers before shooting upright, leaving Bitty alone on his side to bury his face in the grass, praying that the flush he knows is spread across his face can be attributed to the beer and not to anything else.

Later that night he finds himself being carried home on Jack's back, his shoeless foot swinging in the cold night air, head tucked into the side of Jack neck, heavy with the weight of alcohol. Jack smells like spilt alcohol and sweat, and Bitty knows he should be grossed out, but under all of that, he smells like Jack, the same way he smells when he pushes him against the boards early in the morning, the same way he smells when he wraps Bitty up in his arms, screaming at the top of his lungs after a goal. 

“I miss Betsy,” Bitty says, the words muffled into Jack skin. “I know she was just an oven, but she was my first real friend here at Samwell.” 

Jack's shoulders tense, and for a second Bitty thinks he is going to say something, but then he doesn’t, and Bitty finds himself drifting off to sleep, his body warm against Jack's back, the sounds of campus falling away as he clutches his hands in the fabric of Jack's shirt and falls asleep. 

 

//

 

There is a brand new oven in the kitchen and Bitty can’t stop the tears from falling hot and fast down his face, his voice shaky as he finally manages to stutter out a full sentence. “Who- who did this,” his manages to ask as he runs his hands over the surface of the oven.

“Well, we all pitched in,” Jack starts to say before he is overrun by the sounds of protesting teammates.

“But it was Jack's idea to start with,” Chowder says.

“And he kind of bankrolled it all,” Lardo chimes in.

That’s all it takes for the tears to start falling down his face again as he moves to push past Jack towards the fridge.

“I need to bake a pie right this second,” he says, trying without success to move people out of his kitchen, tears still clouding his vision.

“Bittle maybe you should stop crying first,” Jack laughs, grabbing a hold of his elbow and stopping him from making it to the fridge. “Come on, let's go join the festivities and when everyone clears out later, I will even help you bake one, eh?”

The living room is already filled with people by the time Jack leads Bitty inside, with most of the team and an assortment of Wellies already filling the space as Bitty tries to wipe the tears from his face.

Jack looks down at him and smiles as they find their place in the middle of the chaos, the look on his face the exact same as it is on the bench after they pull off a flawless play and Bitty…  Bitty doesn’t understand why.

“What are you grinning at anyway, mister,” he tries to laugh, his throat still raw from crying. 

“I was just thinking that it seems like you like the oven. Was it the right one? You described one that time we went to get froyo and I tried to remember all the details.”

Almost without thought, Bitty finds himself flinging his body into Jack's arms. This stupid, perfect boy bought him and oven and, as Jack's arms come round to hold him close, a fresh wave of tears starts. Betsy the Oven brought him hundreds of pies, countless hours of joy and hope when nothing else made sense. As Bitty looks around the room to Ransom and Holster dancing in the center of the crowd, at Shitty and Lardo talking next to the stairs, at frog’s triple-teaming at beer pong and then, last of all, at Jack, who was is down at him smiling, he realizes that maybe the most important thing about Betsy was never the pies after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @[jlzimmermann](www.jlzimmermann.tumblr.com)


End file.
